https://esev.com/blog/Recent content on Eric SeveranceHugoen-us© 2015 Eric SeveranceFri, 02 Jan 2015 05:21:46 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2015-01-pgp-ssh-key-on-yubikey-neo/Fri, 02 Jan 2015 05:21:46 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2015-01-pgp-ssh-key-on-yubikey-neo/<p>With the new year, I decided it was time to make a new PGP key. I wanted to keep this key on a <a href="https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey-neo/" title="Yubikey NEO">Yubikey NEO and NEO-n</a> for every day use. By using hardware tokens like the Yubikey, the private PGP keys never need to be stored on my computer. The PGP keys on the Yubikey can also be used for SSH public-key authentication.</p> <p/>My current PGP key can always be found at <a href="https://esev.com/pgp.key">https://esev.com/pgp.key</a>.https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-10-fun-with-honeypots/Tue, 01 Oct 2013 01:50:29 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-10-fun-with-honeypots/I've been getting more interested in honeypots recently. This past spring, I setup a honeypot to learn more about what folks do once they successfully brute-force login to an SSH server. The concept was simple, setup a linux VM with common usernames and passwords (i.e. mysql/mysql, user/user, admin/admin, etc.) and wait to see what happens. I created an isolated bridge network on my linux server, then setup a CentOS VM inside KVM.https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-08-solar-monitor-with-jqplot-and-ted5000/Mon, 26 Aug 2013 21:18:37 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-08-solar-monitor-with-jqplot-and-ted5000/I have a solar powered home. Well, sort of. It is a grid-tied solar system, meaning when it is sunny outside our solar panels produce more power than we use and we bank that power with our utility company. At night time, we draw from the power we banked during the day. I have a TED5000 energy monitor to keep tabs on how much power we are producing and how much we are consuming.https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-08-hardening-wordpress/Sun, 25 Aug 2013 22:26:18 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-08-hardening-wordpress/This blog was previously run using Wordpress. Wordpress does not have the best record for having bug free software. To make sure esev.com doesn't get overrun by viruses, I've taken a few additional steps to secure the site. All these steps follow the simple idea that, if it isn't needed for an average viewer of the blog, disable it. 1. Allow only http GET requests Most of the changes to a Wordpress blog happen with POST requests.https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-08-updating-esev-coms-ssl-certificate/Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:50:52 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2013-08-updating-esev-coms-ssl-certificate/The SSL certificate on esev.com was updated today. I get the SSL certificates from StartSSL, mainly because they are free and trusted by most browsers. StartSSL only needs to validate your email address and that you are the owner of the domain, then you're free to create as many certificates as you need. So I don't need to look it up again next year, here is the one-liner for generating the server's certificate:https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-03-front-end-htpc-hardware/Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:47:49 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-03-front-end-htpc-hardware/I've been searching for a while for a perfect front-end for my home automation and entertainment system. In my setup, the front-end system needs to do the following display media on the tv over HDMI send digital audio to the receiver accept input from a remote control handle HD content streamed over the network run quietly and use little power The front-end doesn't need to have any storage, TV tuners, or DVD/Blu-ray drives.https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-one-server-researching-the-hardware/Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:05:54 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-one-server-researching-the-hardware/Using my list of requirements, I set out to find the hardware for my new server. I was building this from scratch so at minimum my purchase list needed to include hard drive storage server case motherboard, RAM &amp; CPU Hard drive storage I decided to focus first on the requirements for the fileserver side of the project. Recall that I was planning for 16TB of storage space. At the time, the largest consumer hard drives were 2 TB.https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-home-server-using-esx-and-zfs/Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:50:37 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-home-server-using-esx-and-zfs/If you are like me, and you like technology, you probably find yourself wanting to try the latest operating systems and software. You also likely have a router for your network, a NAS device for your storage, and maybe a web server for a blog or wiki. After a while, you end up with the situation shown in the picture below, a closet full of servers. The picture below is of my server closet from 2004.https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-one-server-what-is-needed/Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:27:15 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-one-server-what-is-needed/To make sure I got the right hardware and software for this server I needed to know what the server was going to be used for. I needed to get an idea of how much computing power I was going to use to run all the virtual machines. And since this project started off as an upgrade to my NAS fileserver I also needed to figure out how much storage space I was going to need.https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-intensedebate-and-google-analytics/Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:01:52 -0800https://esev.com/blog/post/2011-02-intensedebate-and-google-analytics/I use IntenseDebate for the comment system on my blog. I also use Google Analytics to keep stats on how many people visit my site. To integrate the two, I created a Google Analytics plugin for IntenseDebate. With this plugin, when someone leaves a comment, an event is added in Google Analytics. This event can then be used with advanced segments in Google Analytics to see metrics focusing just on visits that lead to comments.https://esev.com/blog/post/2009-07-hiding-google-analytics-campaign-variables/Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:21:16 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2009-07-hiding-google-analytics-campaign-variables/Do you use a service like Google Analytics for viewing your website statistics? Are you keeping track of your inbound links using campaign variables (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign)? I recently ran into a situation where Google search results were linking to URLs with my campaign variables in them. Not a good thing - it really messes up your stats by reporting Google searches as coming from another source! Not to mention causing duplicate copies of your content to appear in the search listings.https://esev.com/blog/post/2009-06-host-your-own-url-shortener-10-php-apps-reviewed/Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:04:16 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2009-06-host-your-own-url-shortener-10-php-apps-reviewed/I have been planning to host a personal tinyurl or bit.ly like URL Shortening service on my website. I was going to write my own software for this, but thought I'd start by reviewing some existing PHP Apps just in case one already met my needs. I wanted to add a URL shortener to my website for a couple of reasons: People don't always trust blind redirect links from tinyurl or bit.https://esev.com/blog/post/2009-03-google-reader-in-facebook/Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:53:16 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2009-03-google-reader-in-facebook/This has been around for a while, but I only recently started using it. Facebook's built-in importer application can automatically add your Google Reader shared items to your mini feed. To configure this, open your Profile to display all items you have posted. Select your Profile at the top of the Facebook website On the profile page: Click "Settings" on the bottom right side of the Write Something box Choose "https://esev.com/blog/post/2008-09-teksavvy-and-speakout/Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:21:17 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2008-09-teksavvy-and-speakout/I'm always looking for a better deal when it comes to my utility bills. In Ontario, it seems like there aren't many choices when it comes to telephone, television, wireless, and internet service. Either you sign up with Bell or you sign up with Rogers. At least that's what their advertising campaigns would like you to think. There are, however, good alternatives that will save you a few dollars per month.https://esev.com/blog/post/2008-08-google-reader/Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:00:00 -0700https://esev.com/blog/post/2008-08-google-reader/I just started using Google Reader this month to keep on top of websites that I visit frequently. Google Reader is a RSS feed aggregator - meaning, it keeps track of the latest news from many of the websites I visit in just one location. This is really handy, it means instead of checking lots of websites to see if they have any new articles, I can check Google Reader and it shows the new articles from all the websites that I'm interested in following.